5 Tips On How To Train Your Crews On Dealing With Customers Better

Customer service is an important part of any business when you deal with the public. They can essentially make or break your company’s profits by word-of-mouth reference. When your customers talk about you, it’s with the goal of positive reviews. Obviously you want those referrals to come your way, so that you get more business. Your growth and success depends on this very vital facet of running a top notch operation in the septic industry.

Are Your Crews Providing Top Tier Customer Service?
The crews you send out to perform the “heavy lifting” on all your jobs and contracts are representing your company. Ideally you need them to be able to interact with your customers in the right way, on top of doing a stellar job with everything septic work entails. As a business owner, are your crews providing excellent customer service on each job they do? If you feel like your crews may be lacking some customer service skills, then it may be time to give them a little more training. Here’s 5 easy tips on how to train your crews to deal better with all of your customers.

Tip #5: Put Together A Manual
It’s always easier to understand expectations when they are written down in a clear and concise manner. You can get a customer service manual put together for your employees that will outline how to handle different customer scenarios in the best way possible. Go into things like, how to respond to complaints, dealing with difficult customers, and other situations that may come up in your industry. If you have an human resource department this is obviously something they can spearhead for you, but for smaller companies that are run by one owner, this is something you’ll have to figure out how to put together. There are a variety of resources available online that you can also print out for your employees.

Tip #4: Bring In A Specialized Trainer
For a special training session, you can bring in a specialist who can train all your employees at one time on how to improve their customer service skills. They will be able to convey in an effective and relatable way to your crew on methods to increase their interpersonal skills and communication. The goal is to have each crew member more prepared to deal with the public they need to communicate with on the job.

Tip #3: Role Play
Role playing may sound a little silly, but it does give you some idea on how your crews might respond to certain customer situations. Just make it fun in a training setting, but also go into some serious ways they might be able to improve with constructive tips. All top notch companies put their employees through these types of role playing scenarios, and initially your “blue collar” guys or gals might be a little hesitant, but you’ll find that it really helps to open up the conversation about providing better customer relations.

Tip #2: Surprise Visits To Job Sites
Surprise visits are probably something you already do with all your crews, or you may even regularly work right beside them, but if you don’t this it’s a technique that will show you how they are relating to customers in the field. Shadow them for a day to find out if there are holes in their customer service skills. That way you’ll better be able to evaluate their progress and show them ways to improve on their performance for your company.

Tip #1: Stress The Importance Of Soft Skills
Do you know what soft skills are? They are the set of skills that mean etiquette and communication for your industrial crews. Blue collar workers sometimes, to put it mildly, lack these important skills. They are there to get the job done and not much else. In today’s world this isn’t good enough anymore. With competition at an ultimate high, you’ll have to take whatever edge you can get as a successful septic company. Having your employees carry out their performances with top notch communication and customer service skills will create a winning edge for your company in the long run.